NOTES for Luk 13:1-9

When we picture God as this world's executioner, we usually suppose that He deliberately sends specific disasters in order to punish particular people. This idea was widespread in the days of the earthly life of the Lord Jesus Christ as well. When people told Him about the Galileans killed by Pilate, those who told Him most certainly asked (or implied) the question: why? In the same way, after the healing of the man born blind, the disciples ask who sinned, this man or his parents. Why did people die when no specific guilt is known against them, greater than that of others?

And the Lord has to repeat again and again what had already been said more than once through the prophets of Israel: "unless you repent, you will all perish in the same way." Strictly speaking, the fact that the cause of our disasters lies in our not needing God is fairly obvious, but in our own time, when thousands of ordinary people die as a result of terrorist attacks and catastrophes, it is very important for us to take this well to heart. God is not an executioner, but our Defender, our Savior. But in order to take refuge in that protection, we must trust Him, seek Him with all our heart, and turn to Him.

One of the questions that has tormented thinking people in every age has been the question of the justice or injustice of the world.

Some believed that everyone in life, sooner or later, receives what he or she deserves. Others, by contrast, were convinced that chance rules the world and that a person's fate therefore does not depend in any way on that person's actions.

There was also a position that took into account the law of cause and effect, which in the untransformed world can be considered absolute: its adherents were convinced that everyone reaps the fruit of what has been done, but that there is nothing moral or immoral in this, no ethical dimension at all. It is only a matter of an objectively existing universal law whose action extends to everyone. Such an approach can appear quite balanced, but it does not take one thing into account: the person himself, his spiritual and moral choice. In this case, an accidental mistake can prove fatal, and repentance plays no role: the deed is done, the mechanism has been set in motion, and regret over what was done and pangs of conscience can no longer change anything.

At first glance it can appear that Jesus supports, if not the position based on the idea of the immutability of the law of cause and effect, then at least some nonmoral attitude toward the evil happening in the world. After all, He clearly denies a connection between a person's sinfulness and the troubles and disasters that fall upon that person. With one important reservation: unless you turn, you will all perish in the same way. Of course, this means the kind of turning that involves receiving the Kingdom, for according to the Savior's own words it has "drawn near," and now to turn means to receive not only God but also the Kingdom of God, to receive it in order to enter it and live by its laws. As can be seen, only such reception, only participation in the life of the Kingdom and life according to its laws, can deliver a person from the random and completely unregulated evil of the fallen world.

The fallen world is unjust; evil reigns in it and can fall on anyone's head, whether that person is righteous or sinful. Even the law of cause and effect does not guarantee that the consequences of one person's sin will not affect many. In a world where evil reigns, virtue is not rewarded and sin is not punished. There is neither meaning nor purpose in its existence. But meaning and purpose exist in the existence of the Kingdom, just as there is meaning in the transformation that awaits our world at the end of time.

The only meaning of the untransformed world's existence is that it can become a place where the powers of the Kingdom act, a space where the breath of God is felt. And for a person, the only meaning of existence in a meaningless world can only be participation in this process. There is no other meaning, no other salvation in the fallen world. And the Savior proves quite severe here: either turn and become inhabitants of the Kingdom, or you will all perish as meaninglessly as those about whom you are asking.

Our stereotyped thinking usually assumes that God, as judge and executioner in one, deliberately sends specific disasters to punish particular people. This idea was widespread during the earthly life of the Lord Jesus Christ as well. When He was told about the Galileans killed by Pilate, those telling Him most likely asked, or implied, the question: why? In the same way, after the man born blind was healed, the disciples asked who had sinned, the man himself or his parents. Why did people perish when no particular guilt greater than that of others was known against them? And the Lord has to repeat again and again what had already been said many times through the prophets of Israel: “unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” Strictly speaking, it is fairly obvious that our disasters arise because we feel no need for God, but in our time, when thousands of ordinary people die as a result of terrorist attacks and catastrophes, it is very important for us to grasp this firmly. God is not our executioner, but our Defender, our Savior. Yet to seek refuge in this protection, we must trust Him, seek Him with all our heart, and turn to Him.

Answering the question religious people have asked in every age, "Why has this happened to us?", Jesus points them to an event whose details history has not preserved for us. But even without details it becomes clear that this was, as we would call it today, a technological disaster: the tower of Siloam, about which we have no other information, apparently collapsed unexpectedly, and people died under its rubble, people who, judging by the Savior's words, were by no means the worst in the city.

This is His answer to another question asked at the same time: why did people known for their faith and piety die at the hands of Herod, who then ruled Galilee? Here too it is an event mentioned nowhere else, but everything we know today about Herod and his reign says that there could have been many such episodes under him.

As one can see, Jesus' answer to the question "why?" is clear enough and terrible enough, though in the fallen world it was hard to expect another. In the fallen world there is no reward for the righteous and no punishment for sinners. It is amoral, and evil rules in it. Here anything can happen to anyone, and neither faith, nor piety, nor a person's good qualities can change anything in his position.

There are no guarantees that something horrible will not happen to a good, believing, pious person, and not only at human hands, but simply because of what we are used to calling absurd accident. After the fall, man found himself in a world where there is no place for God, where He is not wanted and where His access is extremely limited, limited by the very free will of man that man loves so much to abuse. And God will not force His way where man does not want to see Him. Yet He can still help a person, but only in His world. In the Kingdom.

There, where He is full master and where therefore there is no place for chance, at least when a person is concerned. There everyone receives not a reward, no, but what he sought and could not find in the fallen world when he walked the path that finally brought him to the threshold of the Kingdom. "Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish": it is strange to hear such words from the Savior, addressed to people deeply and sincerely believing, religious, and pious. But Jesus is speaking about the Kingdom.

"Make at last the final step on the path and enter where evil has no place": this is essentially what He calls them to do. Here, in the world where evil rules, nothing can be done. As the Kingdom enters the world, it will change, but in its present state it cannot become good. The answer is completely realistic and frightening in its realism, but it also offers an alternative. The answer of the Messiah, who brought the Kingdom into the world.

Today's reading brings us back to the image of the coming Kingdom, emphasizing the difference between it and our world, which has not yet been transformed. It begins with a mention of events we know about only from the Gospel, one connected with some kind of persecution (v. 1), and the other with what today we would call a technological disaster (v. 4).

Clearly, those who told Jesus about the persecution expected His comments. In this case it may have involved some kind of reprisals undertaken by the Roman authorities in response to another uprising, perhaps affecting those who had not been involved in it, as often happened in those days. But Jesus does not try to explain anything when the subject is a world lying in evil. For Him, as we see, evil has neither explanation nor justification. He offers no theological reasoning, no arguments of the kind representatives of various schools of moral theology so often resort to. He says something more terrible, something no theologian would have dared to say aloud: there is no justice in the world; virtue is not rewarded in it, vice is not punished, and a tower can collapse on anyone's head, whether he is righteous or a sinner (vv. 2, 4).

The only way to avoid this fate is conversion, or "repentance" (vv. 3, 5). On Jesus' lips, conversion was certainly inseparable from readiness to accept the Kingdom He had brought into the world. And to accept it not someday, when the one receiving it has "ripened," but here and now, when the Kingdom has overtaken the one who is turning. This is also the meaning of the parable of the fig tree that Jesus told to those who had asked Him the question (vv. 6-9): if someone remains alive in a world full of evil, it is only because God again and again gives him time and the opportunity for conversion.

But the situation is already at the boundary; all deadlines have long passed, and every time a person postpones conversion, he risks not living to the next attempt. There is no salvation in this world; it is only in the Kingdom, and one should not delay, putting off the moment of meeting it. Better now than later, when it may already be too late. That is why Jesus treats so sternly every attempt to push the Kingdom into second place and to postpone the meeting with it "until later." He demonstratively heals on the Sabbath (vv. 10-13), and not only because the synagogue, the assembly of the faithful, is the most fitting place for the Kingdom to be revealed, and the Sabbath, God's day, is the most fitting time. He also acts this way because in this case waiting is a matter of life and death. He says to the synagogue ruler, the "ruler of the synagogue": do you not water your livestock on the Sabbath? You know that otherwise the animal will die, and therefore you do not consider it a violation of the Sabbath if someone unties the animal and leads it to water; how, then, is a human being worse, especially one who belongs to God's people (vv. 15-16)?

Of course, Jesus could not have failed to know the traditional answer to the question He asked: if an animal is not given water, it is in danger of dying of thirst, and therefore watering an animal is not considered a violation of the Sabbath. But the woman Jesus healed would calmly have lived until the end of the Sabbath day, as she had already lived for many years, and from the point of view of a person faithful to religious tradition there was no need to hurry with her healing. But Jesus cannot and does not want to wait when it comes to bringing a person into the Kingdom. Unlike the synagogue ruler, He knows how time is contracting as it moves toward the end. And He hurries--hurries so that the Kingdom may be opened to everyone who seeks it and is ready to accept it.

Disasters and tragedies have happened in every age. Christ uses one of them as an illustration in His preaching.

We should not look in the fate of the unfortunate for signs of special sins that other people do not have. God does not punish sins in such a primitive sense. But everyone living on earth will be weighed on the scales of eternity: What does he live for? Is he fulfilling his human calling? Does he bear fruit, like a fruit-bearing tree, or not?

"For you, this is the last chance to save the situation," Jesus tells His listeners. "Tomorrow may already be too late." How many such "last chances" have been missed? How many more will be missed? The question "to be or not to be" is not decided theoretically. It is a question Christ asks personally of every disciple able to take it seriously.

Many people often wonder about the meaning of suffering. They do not understand why the most innocent people tend to suffer most often—apparently they assume that suffering is sent as punishment for sins. Jesus is asked this question in connection with a tragedy that occurred in Jerusalem. But He moves the question onto an entirely different plane. He does not deny the connection between sin and punishment, yet at the same time He says that God’s instruction is founded on His patience and mercy. The question becomes not “Why is everything so bad when I have done nothing bad?” but, on the contrary, “Why is everything so good when I have done nothing good?” Jesus Himself immediately gives the answer: everything is so good because God gives us one more chance to change for the better.